If you’re not a gamer, you’d probably still have heard of Silent Hill the movie, and have probably seen the Cybil Bennett police officer character in it. Yeah, the one who spoiler spoiler spoiler spoiler. Cybil in the game is quite different.

Now I can’t tell you what her exact purpose in the game is (there are tons of theories out there if you felt like breaking your brain), but this is what I believe Cybil is not: male protagonist’s love/sex interest, cleavage, blonde bombshell, damsel in distress. She is just a female police officer who happened to be blonde, beautiful and very well-proportioned, like the rest of the young women in the whole of the game universe.

I was quite thrilled when I first read about Konami’s “reimagining” of the original Silent Hill game. Okay, so remakes have never been all that exciting, but this is Silent Hill. Silent Hill is Silent Hill, is Silent Hill, is Silent Hill. Or so I was chanting half in disbelief when I was looking at the screenshots of the now wearing glasses and looking 100 times more distraught Harry Mason (the protagonist).

It really wasn’t until I saw this one screenshot with Cybil… Let’s put the two Cybils side by side. On the left is the Cybil from the 1999 PlayStation days; on the right, Cybil in the upcoming Silent Hill: Shattered Memories.

She may still not be a damsel in distress, but poor, poor Cybil, who did you piss off at BPD, SHPD and/or Konami to deserve this?

I can actually already see why they named the reimagining “Shattered Memories” now.

Vickie Diablos is an unemployable bum allegedly qualified to work in the health IT field, a hardcore gamer geek and a socially awkward logic and science nerd. She thought keeping a "cool blog" would make her a cool person. Alas. More »